The Hopelessness Rules
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” James 4:13-15 NASB
Just a vapor – What are the steps necessary to maintain hopelessness? That’s sounds like an odd question, doesn’t it? Who would want to know what must be done so that life lacks hope? But the truth bites. A great number of us actually practice hopelessness rules without really thinking about it. Then, when we feel impotent, abandoned or purposeless, we are surprised to discover how hopeless we think we are. We try to reverse the flow. Buy another “self-help” book. Join another class. Set goals. Pray more. But it rarely works. Why? Because the foundation is fractured. We haven’t confronted the hopelessness rules so they are still there, undercover, influencing our lives.
James gets us started. He points to Qohelet’s exquisite analysis of Man alone in the world. Vapor! Pointless! A brief wisp of transparent cloud in the wind. That’s James’ conclusion. So, what are the hopelessness rules?
Rule Number 1: The first rule of hopelessness is to live according to your expectations. But James points out that you don’t determine the situation. Whatever occurs is your interaction and reaction to God’s handiwork. Conclusion: if you live with your expectations are the standard, you can guarantee hopelessness.
Rule Number 2: Heschel’s comment is succinct: “the possession of things leads only to loneliness” “affinity with God is [Man’s] persistent aspiration to go beyond himself”[1] What is the hopelessness rule? Simple. Count your worth according to what you own and control.
Rule Number 3: Listen to the serpent. “You will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” The last step in guaranteed hopelessness is to determine for yourself what is good and what is evil. As Ellul notes: “to establish morality is necessarily to do wrong.”[2]
There you have it. Want to be sure you experience hopelessness? Follow the rules. And until you come to terms with each of these rules, and overcome their implications in life, hopelessness will lurk in the shadows, waiting for opportunity to remind you that you are a vapor, worthless and stupid.
Topical Index: hopelessness, control, possession, determination, James 4:13-15
[1] Abraham Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. xxi.
[2] Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, p. 15.
Just a note to say “Thank you” to all who sent birthday greetings. I didn’t actually spend the day drinking wine in Reggio Emilia. Instead I had a good day with my youngest son and my wife in Venice. I’ll send a few pictures of the day later. Thanks again.
Ouch Skip could you speak with a bit of fluff? Hopelessness is a lifestyle & you are not promoting it well.
This Hopelessness seems to have its ‘own’ rules of disengagement that involve approach and hand to hand combat with our morbid fallacy of self being a living thing without God..
This Pain of Hopelessness as a distorted motivator acquired through ignorance of its source actually engenders a loop of pain “numb”ers that are actually pain prolongers..the vicious loop of “the down” on a roll. Who needs Satan to make it worse than we make it ourselves?….Who doesn’t need a Saviour to bring strength to overcome the lie?
On our own,
we’re heading for the grave.
In our faith in Him,
we’re promised eternal life.
Hmmm. Which way seems more hopeful?
Wow. I practiced all three rules with religious ferocity!
I also wanted to point out that (in my experience, anyway) those are the exact same rules that underlie the foundation for the practice of white-knuckle righteousness, also. We have to establish our own terms – our own motivation, too – for our own version of love, when the love of God is missing in our hearts. This is why Paul calls all our efforts to obey God in the flesh “dead works” – works that still result in a failure to effect life.
It has always been curious to me that we are only truly obeying the Law correctly when we are revealing the fruits of the Spirit in our life “against which there is no law”. The presence of obedience in our lives is like an aftereffect of those fruits. People who exhibit the fruits will ‘naturally’ be in obedience already, for they only show up in obedient lives – lives submitted to the rule of the Spirit. Amazing! Again, I have become suspicious that the Law is more of a description than a prescription: we cannot “take Ten and call in the morning” – attempt to establish righteousness (obedience) ‘on our own’. We can only measure to see if we are hitting or missing the mark.
White knuckle knights who are “going about establishing their own law” – even in the name of God – are all fruitless. They have no real “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” to show for it. They are still performing for love – still trying to get some fruit. I almost died doing that stuff.
The righteousness of Christ is about a different foundation and motivation and outcome than what the flesh can possibly ever establish or even imagine. It is more like symbiosis with God than it is like anything else. I know that submitting to doing the will of God instead of my own means my life has turned into a constant surprise. The above list of rules is all about expectations (which are still about my own will). Expectations, however – I am convinced – must be the devil’s substitute for faith. The above rules are surely an attempt to establish faith in the flesh, which, of course, is impossible.
Thanks Laurita One thing that always get me about the fruit of the Spirit part is generally it seems God’s prophet’s were never considered as producing fruit by the tasters when as servants they were called to serve the rebukes unto repentance appetiser tray.. Most don’t like the look or taste or smell of that choice offering. Few choose to chow down on that which is like ipecac(?) the medicine that makes you throw up the poison you swallowed, so you don’t die. I think this must be the hardest of LOVE’s demands on a human being to go forth and produce fruit that is thrown back at you or over you with the added bonus of proverbial rotten tomatoes. I can’t fathom the LOVE that stands still and allows that to be so for the sake of an another….but I want to try. Salvation is a a bitter pill for those who just love sweets because honesty is painful & foreign to the palate of liars. I know our Abba fishes amongst all men but eventually sends hunters too. As need requires love becomes more insistent in the claim of truth. I am trying to discern the difference between white knuckling and the obedience of Love for the End Purpose. Love is gentle and love is kind & firstly peaceable but for Justice to balance the truth of mercy I think love is immovable & purposed in an inevitability too. Conflict….
F J what fantastic discernment! Love is not what we think it is. Interesting that you would draw a parallel between our modern diet – so divorced from the tastes of true nutrition from the earth as we have bred our food to just be sweet instead of nutritious.
Every life that stands for love stands against the evil. All we have to do is stand, and evil will ‘hunt’ itself upon us, is my experience. Evil cannot stand to see love, for love calls it to account. This is because all evil is based upon the lie that it is love, but when real love comes along, the false is shown to be a lie. That shame is unendurable, and evil will seek to justify itself at the expense of love. There is great energy in that justification! All love has to do is stand and deliver. Evil will wear itself out upon the Rock in ferocity. Go pick any average “widow or orphan” and stand up for them, and you will find yourself right in the path of evil, never fear. Apparently, women and children are the biggest threat to evil because they show it up to be what it is the most. Therefore, that is the front that has been established for us, as the true test of our religion. The “least among us” is apparently what we are to be tested on, also.
Your response really grabbed me about standing for the widow. I have been placed in a situation to choose to help someone or not over some years…..someone who actually needs help and it is the MOST difficult to help I have ever come across in the doing of it. Things that should be easy become hard. Practical physical items get destroyed or lost. Plainly it challenges me and I question how can I show deep truthful love? I don’t ‘feel that’ at times. The relationship seems without purpose from my viewpoint as the same old same old continues. It is like the pit is seeing how much it can steal, before I give up and turn away in disgust and vent my frustration in a sinful way. I have asked to be released from it but also am drawn to give in the need and have grown so much in the purpose of learning not to give in, to my impatience at not seeing more concretely, advancement in what is important to my agenda. Everything going to my plan & timeframe. I am a person who has never had children and this has been a place of learning what to let go of and what to grip onto in a deft way and not respond in fear or anger of my self being opposed with a fearful grip on an ‘out of control situation’ to throw it away with all my strength or strangle it. I am learning to forgive. I am thinking this maybe the crucible where trust & faithfulness in God’s purpose is what is best for the plan for each of us. I was a very short fused impatient person and can see some character traits I used to think were me, being overturned. I do so struggle to love & we all know what is in our hearts even though we know at times it is most definitely NOT who we would prefer to be. The best thing is that at times this patience growing in me shows me a glimpse into the patience of God’s love because this is how we all have been to Him and He did not abandon us in our need even though we didn’t respond. Thanks Laurita. FJ
Praise the Lord in you, F J! Yeah, me too.